


Name Of The Game (His Name)

by alottlehomo



Series: Point of (Nearly) Obsessive [2]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Ezekiel is small and needs to be protected while also fiercely loves, Jake and Ezekiel are hella gay, Jake is jealous, Jenkins and Ezekiel are buddies, M/M, exploration into that jenkins thing from the first fic in this series!, ezekiel remembers the game, it isn't explicit but he's jealous, platonically this time, well Ezekiel is pan af and Jake is bi but you know what I mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 14:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9276416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alottlehomo/pseuds/alottlehomo
Summary: More detail about how Ezekiel remembers and how it effects him, actual explanation for Jenkins' bit in my other fic, and Ezekiel and Jake fluff because I have a new obsession.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Should probably read the first fic in the series first but you don't have to, this was supposed to be cute then it kinda got sad but I saved it! Maybe! Hope you guys like this one too!

He doesn't know how may times Jake says it before his response is automatic, how many times he hears the words "Some master thief" before he's instantly having trouble breathing, and physically pushing whoever's nearest to him behind him like they're already under attack. He doesn't remember exactly, he doesn't remember anything from the game exactly. 

He remembers of course, because he's Ezekiel Jones and he /despises/ other people knowing himself better than he does (read: his brain wouldn't let him live in peace when there was fresh nightmare material).

For a while he thinks they're just fabrications, just his brain fucking with him like when he was a kid and he had nightmares for a month about drop-bears falling through the canopy and ripping everyone to shreds. He thinks it's just that but with people, until he starts to notice little things like Eve really does love dark chocolate and how if you say certain things around her she freezes up just like he does, he notices how the different expressions Jake had in his dreams are his actual expressions (his expression when talking about his love for his family and his love for history are very different and Ezekiel thinks about this a lot). He notices how Cassandra absolutely adores kids movies and shows and pairs it with his memory of her parents and how they'd raised her to be Smart And Intelligent and never really let her just be a kid.

He pairs the memories and the truth together until it clicks that it's real and then the horror factor comes in. 

It's difficult to tell what happens when, the final few loops are easy to pick out and so are the first few, but the ones between all blur and mesh and it's hard to tell at what point he sat with each of them and just talked. 

Ezekiel Jones got to know each of his friends inside out at least once in that whole game, he always started first, always knew that it would make them trust him if he told them everything. 

The first few times Jake didn't say anything back, didn't open up, just stared in shock and something Ezekiel wasn't sure he recognized on the other mans face. Eve and Cassandra both gave him a look along the lines of 'I'm sorry, I'll protect you now' before going into their stories (both of which Ezekiel wants to protect them from). Jake didn't though, Ezekiel couldn't pin it, he never looked at him as though he needed to be protected not even when he mentioned all the times he had to save his mothers life with a pen cartridge and a box cutting knife, he always looked more like he was that much prouder to be standing next to him. 

The times when they talk before they start going through the game are the only times Ezekiel is ever certain Jake won't call him a master thief like it's a taunt, but sometimes he panics anyway, feels the lead fill his lungs despite there being no trigger ( maybe there is one, maybe the whole game is just the trigger now) 

Jake reacts differently when they talk first though, unlike when he taunts he doesn't just grab Ezekiel's shoulders and follow him to the floor his brow all furrowed like he never expected this to happen. When they talk first Jake damn near plasters himself to Ezekiel's back and holds and holds and talks and talks and keeps his arms just tight enough to put pressure on his ribs and for a minute he feels cared for and safe.

He kisses Jake for the first time after one of these incidents when Jake talks and talks and talks and doesn't let go when Ezekiel is clearly calmed down. 

Ezekiel looks and feels like a bloody wreck for his first kiss with a cowboy that he'd only barely fancied before, and was rapidly falling in love with, but that was fine because for a second that cowboy kissed back. 

Jake struggles with self acceptance, Ezekiel knows that, his father did a number on him - he wasn't allowed to be smart, to like art, to like books. To like boys? No. He kept so much of himself hidden for so long, and sometimes it was so easy, that Ezekiel has to force himself not to be hurt when Jake rips himself away and says he isn't like that. 

The first twenty times it happens Ezekiel just nods and they move on, the thirtieth time it turns into a lecture about being able to live girls and boys and not being less for it ( this one ends with Ezekiel being the one kissed)

Ezekiel spends his fair share of time with the girls of course, spends what feels like actual days just talking with Eve, hours with Cassandra. He spends time with all of them but now that he's out, now that he knows he's safe he can never stop thinking about Jake, about what happened there with him. 

When Jenkins figures him out, sits him down with a cuppa and a stern look and he'd talked:

_" Once upon a time the King Arthur and us knights were trapped in a loop where we all had to face our greatest fear, I watched countless times as my brothers in arms saw and faced there's but I wasn't prepared for mine. I expected a monster, a demon of some kind, but what I got instead was much more difficult to conquer. My recently discovered immortality had changed my greatest fear, and instead of a Chimera, or a Minotaur, or a basilisk, or a hippogriff, before me laid the bodies of everyone I'd ever cared for and on the top was a child. The child was mine, I knew that somehow, and I watched it grow old and age before my eyes, I watched and I never.. Well I never really coped so again and again I watched until the possibility of me having a child was all but gone. I'd never really seen an appeal to sex before but the more I watched the more the idea of having a child even for a lovers sake was.. horrifying. I'm not sure I ever actually conquered it but the shift change, the impossibility of that fear made the mirage disappear. No one spoke of it, but we all knew, it was one of my many many choices in the end to ignore it, but I will tell you this - ignoring it won't make coping any easier, clearly I have my own share of social issues because of things I've ignored so, as the caretaker of this annex and it's residents.. I will be here."_

Ezekiel wanted to brush it off, in the beginning, wanted to shrug and make a joke. How could Jenkins start a story with once upon a time and still sound like a grumpy old man who was too melancholic and harrowed by the world too stand to watch a fight he thought he'd won ages ago? Ezekiel wanted to ask, wanted to deflect but in the end he'd ended up just talking right back - like with Eve, like with Cassandra, like with Jake, like with all of them in that stupid game. 

He was never sure if any of the others caught the shift in his and Jenkins' relationship after that day, but they met for tea and lunch almost every Sunday after that, just to be there with someone who knew even if it was one of those days they decided they couldn't talk or didn't want to. They developed fail safes in each other, they'd save each other from their fears, sure they could do it on their own but it was safer.. healthier probably to put at least some faith in someone else.

Jenkins isn't actually sure why he follows Eve through the door when they get it to work again but he does and he knows the second he hears the word lab that he's here because Ezekiel will need him. 

Ezekiel doesn't know why he always butts in at just the right moment between Cassandra and Jenkins or Jenkins and his thoughts, but he does, and he can always tell with one look when it's truly because he was needed. 

They've been doing their saving each other spiel for two months before anything else changes, and suddenly Jake is insisting on training with him, on teaching him to fight. 

It's hilarious solely because Ezekiel throws Jake over his back the first time the other man tries to rush him. 

"I was in M16, remember? I could probably beat you in my sleep."

Ezekiel never missed a session, actively insisted on keeping them going when Jake talked about "not wasting your precious gaming time, Jones"

The first time Jake picked him up though, is when he regretted it most. " Wait! N-nononoNO!" He'd shouted, startled as Jake looped their arms together and spun them around, wholly relying on Ezekiel to stick his legs out and then to support him as he kicked up. 

The next time they train (every Sunday immediately after Jenkins and Ezekiel have lunch, something Ezekiel now knows was on purpose) Ezekiel insists if Jake is going to pick him up he had to do it properly so he didn't bruise again.

"You're ruining my cool, impeccable, aesthetic mate." Ezekiel had said and to that Jake had shook his head and replied, " Yeah right, you just don't like being off your own two feet."

This particular argument ended with Ezekiel being kiss, pressed against a wall, until Cassandra came in to ask Ezekiel to braid her hair over her stitches.

"Baird offered, but her hands aren't.."

"Soft enough? I've got thief's hands Cassie, you're allowed to say it."

"Guys, you know how weird that is right?"

"It isn't weird, I've nicked dozens of pear necklaces right off ladies' necks before I mean it isn't hard."


End file.
